Scam Email Pretends to be From Lottery Winners Bill And Andrea Groner

People all around the world have reported receiving an email claiming to be from Canadian lottery winners Bill And Andrea Groner. The email announces that you have been selected as one of six lucky people that the couple has chosen as recipients of $1 million each.

Supposedly, the couple decided to donate the money from their $50 million lottery prize as part of a ‘charity project’ and chose 6 email addresses as the ‘winners’.

Alas, you are not set to receive $1 million as claimed. Bill And Andrea Groner did win $50 million via an Alberta, Canada lottery drawn in December 2014. The couple kept quiet about their win for 7 months before finally coming forward to claim their prize. They have told media outlets that they are intending to use some of their winnings to help family, friends and charities.

However, this email is not from the couple and they are not randomly giving away millions of dollars as claimed.

In fact, the email is a typical advance fee scam designed to trick you into sending your money and personal information to cybercrooks. If you reply as instructed in the hope of claiming the promised 1 million dollars, you will soon be told that you must first send various upfront payments. The scammers – still posing as Bill And Andrea Groner – will claim that the requested payments are required to cover insurance costs, banking fees, tax, and various other imaginary expenses. They will insist that these fees cannot be deducted from the main fund for legal reasons.

The scammers may also ask you to provide a large amount of personal and financial information, ostensibly so that they can process the claim and award you the promised funds.

But, of course, all of the money sent will stay in the pockets of the criminals and you are very unlikely to get any of it back. Moreover, the scammers may harvest enough of your personal information to allow them to steal your identity.

Since details of the win have been made public, several versions of the above scam email have been sent out. All claim that the couple are randomly giving away large sums to people they have selected online via their name or email address. All are advance fee scams as described above.

This is certainly not the first time that criminals have pretended to be lottery winners as a means of tricking people into sending them money and personal information.

In fact, almost every time a large lottery win is announced, criminals send out scam emails pretending to be from the winners.

And lottery scammers use many other cover stories to achieve the same ends. Be wary of any email, social media message, or SMS that claims that you have won a large prize in a lottery or promotion that you have never even entered.

Such scams are very common and continue to gain new victims every day.